Warblers: My Biggest Sketching Challenge

As sketching subjects, gulls are tops. They’re not very scared of humans, they hold the same pose for hours. They’re tough to ID in their multiple variable molts, but if you just want to sketch them, they’re fantastic.

American wood warblers, the flying jewels of this hemisphere’s avian life, are not so cooperative. They never stop moving, and most of that is behind leafed-out part of trees — always the most leafed out, always the densest.

A MacGillivray’s warbler (or possibly more than one) has been hanging around our yard for a few days. I finally sat outside yesterday, determined to sketch it. These birds are skulking even for warblers. It was impossible. You’d get a tail, a bill, that diagnostic half-eye ring, but never the whole, and never for more than a second or two in any case.

I came inside and tried to recreate what I’d seen on paper. It looks wooden. Lifeless. The pen sketch at least has life.

Then, this morning. I heard a warbler chip I didn’t recognize. It turned out to be a Townsend’s. These winter along the coast; I hadn’t seen one yet for the Bigby, and we had opted not to go to Point Reyes birding for the day to catch up on other things.

Same thing: a tail, a head, a wing bar. What does the yellow do? I started to annotate my sketches, trying to make sure I got what I needed. I wasn’t in a hurry. The bird would move off somewhere else but seemed to return to a favored section of the walnut tree.

This one, I felt I had enough to be able to recreate. I did check the field guide (it would have been much better to go to the museum and study skins, but not on a Sunday afternoon). I took a piece of YUMMY Ampersand Pastelbord and worked into it with Derwent Coloursoft pencils.

The key? Always draw a warbler as though it’s about to take off for somewhere else. Because that’s exactly what it’s about to do.

Black Phoebe

There’s a lot of activity around the vegetable garden these days. This black phoebe is chasing, and being chased by, a young mockingbird. I hope they’re all remembering to eat the bugs…

White-tailed Kite, Preening

Coming back from work at lunch, there was a kite perched in an almost leafless eucalyptus. I got off my bike and sketched it, ignoring the yellow and orange-crowned warblers closer by but impossible to catch…

Scolding, Again

The house wren continues a regime of scolding from the brush pile…

Red-tailed Hawk Soaring

It has now been some days since I’ve seen a Swainson’s hawk, but I’m seeing red-tails fairly regularly. More proof, as if last night’s chilly breeze weren’t enough, that fall is well on the way…

House Wren, Scolding

A house wren has been hanging around outside the window in a downed tree limb, scolding at regular intervals. It took me a long time to find it because they don’t move when they make this unruly chatter and it is exactly the same color as the now-brown leaves…

Prairie Falcon

Raptor Center, again. This prairie falcon is sharing digs with a peregrine, which is about a third again as large.

Red-tailed Hawk

Sometimes, what you have in your pocket is a fountain pen with turquoise ink…

Mourning Doves on Wire

Green-backed Heron

There’s a new — or perhaps old, but newly exposed — weir-type-barrier under one of the bridges in the Arboretum. A green-backed heron was fishing from it very animatedly at lunch today…